Jordan files complaint over Dead Sea Scrolls

Allegedly stolen during Six-Day War

Feb 09, 2010

Jordan has complained to a United Nations agency after Canada refused to seize a display of Dead Sea Scrolls at a recent exhibit in Toronto.

Jordan says the ancient manuscripts, which had been on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority, were stolen from a museum in East Jerusalem that Israel seized from Jordan during the Six-Day War of 1967.

Some of the earliest copies of biblical and religious writings ever found, the 2,000-year-old scrolls were discovered primarily by a Bedouin shepherd in 1947 in caves overlooking the Dead Sea.

Seventeen of the approximately 900 scrolls had been on display in Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum since June at the hugely popular “Words that Changed the World” exhibition, which closed on January 3.

On January 11, after Canada declined to seize the scrolls, Jordan announced that it had complained to UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.